Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [57]
Francis McNamara had once been an average-looking guy, five-feet-ten, light hair. Now he looked like a overstretched rubber band dried in the sun, a skeleton with skin. We slipped him overboard, a burial at sea, just like in the movies, and as he sank out of sight Phil and I were all the more determined to survive our ordeal.
THE DAYS DRAGGED by, but I’d wake up each morning almost energetic, thinking, “Oh boy, another day closer to the islands!” I knew we’d get there. I knew my charts. I knew the trade winds and the currents.
But our trials were not over.
We’d braved hunger, thirst, sharks, bullets, and death. Now came a storm. We’d been through others, but none with waves that seemed to tower almost forty-five feet high. One moment the raft rested on a “mountaintop,” the next it was at the bottom of a “canyon.” The ride was more frightening than the sharks or the machine guns. It took all we had just to stay alive. Again.
This much I knew: we had to stay low, our feet tucked securely under the seats. Under no circumstances could we lash ourselves in with the parachute cord. I remembered a rescue mission in Hawaii, after a storm. We found a colonel and two men in their raft, upside down, blue bottom up, tied in. Dead.
I scooped about four inches of water into the raft for extra stability. Then I tied the cord under the seats and looped it around each of us only once, without a knot. If a raft turns over, you can’t untie a knot in the water. A wet rope is brutal. We held the rope, hands aching. The night passed, filled with terror and rain.
The next morning, the forty-sixth day, the rain was intermittent but the waves still fierce. As one roller lifted us high, I spotted land. At first I wasn’t sure, but when we rose again, I saw more green.
“Phil,” I said. “I’ve just seen an island.”
He popped up and said, “I see it, too.”
The date was July 12, 1943, and I assumed that as we’d hoped and prayed, we had finally reached the Marshall or Gilbert Islands. We were still too far away to be sure, and another stormy night would pass before we could accurately assess the situation. We covered ourselves with the canvas to ward off the cold and tried to get some sleep. Our only fear was drifting between and past the islands in the dark.
The next morning the big blow was gone and we found ourselves in an atoll lagoon. I counted sixteen tiny islands, all apparently deserted. I could see old huts, bananas, breadfruit, and coconuts—but no people. I couldn’t wait to get ashore. One island was as big as a bedroom, with a single tree on it like you see in a comic strip. We broke out the oars and rowed. It seemed almost too good to be true.
It was. I heard airplane engines and looked up to see two Zeroes, probably at ten thousand feet, in combat practice. I knew they couldn’t see us.
I kept rowing, pitifully weak after forty-seven days adrift, trying to make land before anyone discovered us. Then I saw a new island. I said, “Hey, there was no island there.”
“Whaddaya mean?” said Phil.
“There’s an island right over there, with one tree on it.”
Phil looked and said, “Yeah, I see it—but there’re two trees.”
“You’re crazy. There’s only one tree.” I looked again, and this time there were two trees. “What’s happening here?”
It wasn’t an island at all but a boat with two masts, and it was heading straight for us.
7
EXECUTION ISLAND
The two-masted boat was a Japanese patrol ship. At first we lay low in the raft, but then I realized we had to get ashore quickly and hide. I rowed like mad for the nearest patch of green, but I was in no shape to make much headway. Before long they spotted us.
That was it.
The ship made a slow pass, about thirty feet distant. I could see the crew on deck, holding swords and rifles. One man trained a machine gun in our direction. Phil and